One of the Society's oldest members, Lalage Grigg Freeman, of Morganton, died on July 26 at age 95. The sister of Cliffside's Hazel McCurry, Lalage lived here from 1927 to 1936. Not too long before she died, she answered the Where Are You Now survey. She was in Cliffside High's class of 1931. Her friends included Virginia Christy and Myrtle Mashburn. We'll add her to the "Where" list soon.
Cliffside Day is October 9. The Gathering occurs on Friday evening, Oct. 8.
Although our immediate focus is on raising funds for the clock's repair, don't forget: We need new members, and we need current members to keep your membership up to date.
How can you join or check your annual expiration date? Go to the Membership panel on the Society page.
Remember Cliffside now has a Facebook page. Post your comments and reply to others. You might find some old friends and make some new ones. And we have a YouTube channel. We'll be adding more videos on that page soon.
House Moving95.
In 1955 Duke Village ceased to exist. Several houses were purchased by their occupants, who moved them to their own land nearby. See the Observer story by our own Hannah Miller about the "moving" experience of Mrs. T. M. Bishop.
Updated with another story.
Firebugs
In the '60s, as the mill houses became vacant (and eyesores), some were intentionally burned by the Cliffside Fire Department. Sounds wasteful but these old dwellings were not worth the gas it took to burn them down.
Where is this clock?
It has been in town for 90 years, but seen by only a handful of people. It's an important element of a major landmark. Where is it?
Avondale Map & Aerial Photo
In 1975, Avondale historian Irene Roach Delpino, drawing on the memories of fellow residents, drew a very detailed map of her town as it was around the year 1950.
Also, there's an aerial photo of the Haynes Mill, and many of the homes in that village.
They're in The County section (under History), on the Places and Photos pages.
The Old Dry Cleaners
It was built in the 1910's as a silent movie theater. In 1926 it was converted to a dry cleaning plant that remained in operation for about 50 years.
The Henrietta Mill
Some background and photos of the mill at Henrietta, which R.R. Haynes built in the late 1890s, before he built the town and mill of Cliffside.
Family Stories
The oldest graves in Cliffside Cemetery hold four descendents of one Robert Haney, a Revolutionary War veteran and, after 1783, resident of the High Shoals area. It is thought that Haney or his children once owned the land on which Cliffside was later founded.
Who lived where in Cliffside? If you're interested in 1964, we've found an old county cross-reference directory that lists 667 individuals on the streets and roads in and around Cliffside.
Now we have a Media Center where you'll find links to all the video and audio material on this site. The sights and sounds include: extended audio interviews with Cliffside natives; and videos of the closing of the mill and of workers drawing the pond back in 2000.
Cliffside Sketches
The latest: stories of a true pioneer of Cliffside, James Edward Atkinson (1857-1954), the author's grandfather.
Were you aware?
There is a list of all the dozens of Photos of the Month we've selected since Remember Cliffside began in 2002. On the Galleries home page you can go through the list and revisit all those outstanding photos.
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Family Stories
He's the "Son Who Never Forgets." James David Padgett drives from Kingsport, TN every Mother's Day to Cliffside Cemetery, to visit the grave of his mother who died the day he was born. JoAnn Huskey chronicles Jim's kin, many of whom lived in Cliffside.
1954 Cliffdweller
Bill Haley & the Comets recorded "Rock Around The Clock," the Tasmanian Devil first appeared in Bugs Bunny cartoons, the first transistor radio became available... but that's not all, the Cliffside High class of '54 graduated. We can prove it, here's their yearbook.
A “New” Map of Cliffside
Well, new to modern generations at least. Discovered recently in Phillip White's collection, it is the best evidence yet of Cliffside's street layout prior to the late 1920's. We'll have it on display at the Gathering in October.
Hill's Creek Trestle
Don Bailey found this blurb about our railroad in a 1914 issue of the Manufacturers Record, a trade newspaper. Obviously the massive trestle was eventually torn down and replaced by a culvert, but when? Does anyone recall ever seeing it?
Interview: Hollis Owens, Jr.
Could you have guessed that M.A. Bearden (who, in the 1950s, replaced Maurice Hendrick as the Company's general manager) only had a third grade education? That and other astounding details are revealed in this fascinating discussion.
Haynes Family Photo Gallery
We have 16 new photos in the Haynes Gallery, contributed by Betty Shull Griffin, granddaughter of R.R. Haynes. In this lovely old picture, that's her aunt Virginia Haynes about 1916. She was about to become Mrs. Barron Caldwell. These new photos begin on page 7 of the gallery.
Honeycutts/Sorgees
 Ben Honeycutt writes about his families, who were once important cogs in the machinery that was Cliffside. He provides photos of his parents (shown above), and his grandparents, aunts and uncles in the Honeycutt and Sorgee families.
Another Yearbook
For all those fans of 1953, here's the Cliffdweller for that wonderful time. Remember? Jimmy Ingram, Betsey Forbes, Patsy Ingram and Hugh Blanton were part of our crowd of 26 bright-eyed fledglings who thought we were prepared to take on the world. Ha!
Odds & Ends
Where have you seen this sign before? If you lived in Cliffside, and you're old enough, you probably walked under it hundreds of times.
Profile: Dr. Zeno Wall
 This imposing man had a great effect on the people of Cliffside and the area. From helping establish the first Baptist church in the new 20th century to the last funeral he conducted here, probably 50 years later, he was at our service.
Vernon Stallings
 He was a casualty of the Korean War, and may have been forgotten by all but his family and friends but for the inclusion of his name on “Johnson's List.” Here's what happened to Vernon and hundreds of other prisoners of war on a death march into North Korea in 1950.
Map of Duke Village
Thanks to his months of research and the drafting skills of Jim Cauble, we present a map of the village at Duke Power's Cliffside Steam Station, as it was in the 1950s. It shows the houses and the occupants. There is also a listing of all the residents of the village.
Rock Springs Campground
We read in Joe Beason's journal that, back in the 1880's and 90's, he attended camp meetings at the Rock Springs Campground. Where was this place? we wondered. Now we've found out, and it was not far from the site on which Cliffside would be built.
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Photo of the Month — September
These steps and walls are at least a century old but won't last another generation. Weather and roots of vegetation will turn them into rubble. Time marches on.
Learn what happened to your old friends since they left Cliffside. Click on a photo.
Landmarks: Jenkins Grocery
Not a filling station, as such, although you could buy gas and oil. Not a supermarket, although you could shop for essentials. It was the convenience store of its day, run by a man named Voyd Jenkins. The building still stands, although it has been remodeled and repurposed.
“I am so happy to review the Cliffside memories. My teachers also included Miss Dickerson; Mr Huff [Huss], math teacher; Mr. Beatty, principal. I listened to the presidents speech on the radio in class the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor...”
— Ruby Ward Cervino
Poems of Cliffside
“Listen, I’ve got to tell you—
Cannot keep it longer or be still—
Walked down the street one day last week
And got a job in the Cliffside Mill.”
That's just a taste of the poetic offerings you'll find in this section.
From The Rutherford County Sun, dozens of articles and columns from the late 1920s, describing events both tragic and humorous; changes to the town; advertising by Cliffside stores and businesses; and community, school and church news.
Latest addition: In 1919 came news of progress on the new mill in Avondale, Cliffside's support of the recent war, the company's benevolence during the great flu epidemic in the past few months.
Did you ever wonder how it all started? In our Documents section we've added the Articles of Incorporation for Cliffside Mills, dated February 4, 1901. It's the agreement between R. R. Haynes and his other partners to start a business that would prosper for over 100 years.
Remember those old two, three and four digit phone numbers? Find the number of everyone in town in the Rutherford County Phone Directory for 1944.
Browse through these and many other old Cliffside papers. This is history, folks.
Visit The Archives
The snippets on this page appear for only a few months and then, alas, in order to make room for new features, they vanish into thin air.
Or do they?
Actually they don't vanish at all, but take up residence on one of our archives pages. Browse through them occasionally. You may find an item you missed when it was first published.
Note: None of the pages on this site is ever archived, all remain wherever they were first stored, in History, Memories, etc. Only these front-page teasers are moved to the archive section.
Roots of Earl & Snuffy
Bob Carlin's article "The Roots of Earl and Snuffy: Searching For The Banjo Along The North/South Carolina Border" follows the trail of the first players to use the three-finger style of banjo playing, whose greatest practitioner is Earl Scruggs. And the trail leads right through Cliffside!
Grover & Ina Fortune Haynes
 We learn a great deal about them in this
double profile by their son, Grover, Jr. They were married in 1910, after each finished college. At the end of the decade Grover had finished dental school (in Atlanta) and was practicing dentistry in Cliffside. Ina, shown here at age 27, was an influential person in her own right, as a writer and once serving as Cliffside's postmistress. Read their compelling stories and enjoy the photographs.
Transcripts
 There was a lot of “talking” at the 2009 Gathering, and we transcribed most of it. If you missed the Gathering, or even if you didn't, read the remarks about Mr. Lipscomb and Mr. Beatty by their relatives and friends. And see many of the photos featured in the talks. Go to the Society page and click the Features tab.
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Find the house where you lived and the streets where you walked and played, on this map drawn in 1942.
